Thursday, October 03, 2013

A Skulk of Foxes

The vixen who trotted through yesterday's post came to us in a mischievous Trickster guise: both clever and foolish, creative and destructive, perfectly civilized and utterly wild. Trickster foxes appear in old stories gathered from countries and cultures all over the world -- including Aesop's Fables from ancient Greece, the "Reynard" stories of medieval Europe, the "Giovannuzza" tales of Italy, the "Brer Fox" lore of the American South, and stories from diverse Native American traditions.

At the darker end of the fox-lore spectrum, however, we find creatures of a distinctly more dangerous cast: Reynardine, Mr. Fox, kitsune (the Japanese fox wife),kumiho (the Korean nine-tailed fox), and other treacherous shape-shifters.

Fox women can be found in many story traditions but they're particularly prevalent across the Far East. Fox wives, writes folklorist Heinz Insu Fenkle (in a good article on the subject) are seductive creatures who "entice unwary scholars and travelers with the lure of their sexuality and the illusion of their beauty and riches. They drain the men of their yang -- their masculine force -- and leave them dissipated or dead (much in the same way La Belle Dame Sans Merci in Keats's poem leaves her parade of hapless male victims).

"Korean fox lore, which comes from China (from sources probably originating in India and overlapping with Sumerian lamia lore) is actually quite simple compared to the complex body of fox culture that evolved in Japan. The Japanese fox, or kitsune, probably due to its resonance with the indigenous Shinto religion, is remarkably sophisticated. Whereas the arcane aspects of fox lore are only known to specialists in other East Asian countries, the Japanese kitsune lore is more commonly accessible. Tabloid media in Tokyo recently identified the negative influence of kitsune possession among members of the Aum Shinregyo (the cult responsible for the sarin attacks in the Tokyo subway). Popular media often report stories of young women possessed by demonic kitsune, and once in a while, in the more rural areas, one will run across positive reports of the kitsune associated with the rice god, Inari."

There are tales of fox wives in the West as well, but fewer of them; and they tend, by and large, to be gentler creatures. (To marry them is unlucky nonetheless, for they're skittish, shy, and not easily tamed.) An exception to this general rule can be found in the räven stories of Scandinavia. The fox-women who roam the forests of northern Europe are portrayed as heart-stoppingly beautiful, fiercely independent, and extremely dangerous.

Wild and sly you hunt in time of darkness long sleeves hide your claws with your prey you play your mouth is red with blood.

The "nine-tailed fox" of China and Japan is often (but not always) a demonic spirit, malevolent in intent. It takes possession of human bodies, both male and female, moving for one victim to another over thousands of years, seducing other men and women in order to dine on their hearts and livers. Human organs are also a delicacy for the nine-tailed fox, or kumiho, of Korean lore -- although the earliest texts don't present the kumiho as evil so much as amoral and unpredictable...occasionally even benevolent...much like the faeries of English folklore.

In the West, it's the fox-men we need to beware of -- such as Reynardine in the old folk ballad, a handsome were-fox who lures young maidens to a bloody death. Below, the ballad is performed by Jon Boden and The Remnant Kings at the Cecil Sharp House in London:

Mr. Fox, in the English fairy tale of that name, is cousin to the kumiho and Reynardine, with a bit of Bluebeard mixed in for good measure, promising marriage to a gentlewoman while his lair is littered with her predecessors' bones. Neil Gaiman drew inspiration from the tale when he wrote his wry, wicked poem "The White Road":

There was something sly about his smile, his eyes so black and sharp, his rufous hair. Something that sent her early to their trysting place, beneath the oak, beside the thornbush, something that made her climb the tree and wait. Climb a tree, and in her condition. Her love arrived at dusk, skulking by owl-light, carrying a bag, from which he took a mattock, shovel, knife. He worked with a will, beside the thornbush, beneath the oaken tree, he whistled gently, and he sang, as he dug her grave, that old song... shall I sing it for you, now, good folk?

Jeannine Hall Gailey, by contrast, casts a sympathetic eye on fox shape-shifters, writing plaintively from a kitsune's point of view in "The Fox-Wife's Invitation":

These ears aren't to be trusted. The keening in the night, didn't you hear? Once I believed all the stories didn’t have endings, but I realized the endings were invented, like zero, had yet to be imagined. The months come around again, and we are in the same place; full moons, cherries in bloom, the same deer, the same frogs, the same helpless scratching at the dirt. You leave poems I can’t read behind on the sheets, I try to teach you songs made of twigs and frost. you may be imprisoned in an underwater palace; I'll come riding to the rescue in disguise. Leave the magic tricks to me and to the teakettle. I've inhaled the spells of willow trees, spat them out as blankets of white crane feathers. Sleep easy, from behind the closet door I'll invent our fortunes, spin them from my own skin.

Although chancy to encounter in myth, and too wild to domesticate easily (in stories and in life), some of us long for foxes nonetheless, for their musky scent, their hot breath, their sharp-toothed magic. "I needed fox," wrote Adrienne Rich:

Badly I needed a vixen for the long time none had come near me I needed recognition from a triangulated face burnt-yellow eyes fronting the long body the fierce and sacrificial tail I needed history of fox briars of legend it was said she had run through I was in want of fox

And the truth of briars she had to have run through I craved to feel on her pelt if my hands could even slide past or her body slide between them sharp truth distressing surfaces of fur lacerated skin calling legend to account a vixen's courage in vixen terms

Ah, but Fox is right here, right beside us, Jack Roberts answers, a little warily:

Not the five tiny black birds that flew out from behind the mirror over the washstand,

nor the raccoon that crept out of the hamper,

nor even the opossum that hung from the ceiling fan

troubled me half so much as the fox in the bathtub.

There's a wildness in our lives. We need not look for it.

There are a number of good books that draw upon fox legends -- foremost among them, Kij Johnson's exquisite novel The Fox Woman. I also recommend Neil Gaiman's The Dream Hunters (with the Japanese artist Yoshitaka Amano); Larissa Lai's unusual novel, When Fox Is a Thousand; Helen Oyeyemi's recent novel, Mr. Fox; and Ellen Steiber's gorgeous urban fantasy novel, A Rumor of Gems, as well as her heart-breaking novella "The Fox Wife" (published in Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears). For younger readers, try the "Legend of Little Fur" series by Isobelle Carmody. You can also support a fine mythic writer by subscribing to Sylvia Linsteadt's The Gray Fox Epistles: Wild Tales By Mail (more information here). Many other good fox tales are listed here.

For the fox in myth, legend, and lore, try: Fox by Martin Wallen; Reynard the Fox, edited by Kenneth Varty; Kitsune: Japan's Fox of Mystery, Romance, and Humour by Kiyoshi Nozaki;Alien Kind: Foxes and Late Imperial Chinese Narrative by Raina Huntington; The Discourse on Foxes and Ghosts: Ji Yun and Eighteenth-Century Literati Storytelling by Leo Tak-hung Chan; and The Fox and the Jewel: Shared and Private Meanings in Contemporary Japanese Inari Worship, by Karen Smythers.

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A Skulk of Foxes

The vixen who trotted through yesterday's post came to us in a mischievous Trickster guise: both clever and foolish, creative and destructive, perfectly civilized and utterly wild. Trickster foxes appear in old stories gathered from countries and cultures all over the world -- including Aesop's Fables from ancient Greece, the "Reynard" stories of medieval Europe, the "Giovannuzza" tales of Italy, the "Brer Fox" lore of the American South, and stories from diverse Native American traditions.

At the darker end of the fox-lore spectrum, however, we find creatures of a distinctly more dangerous cast: Reynardine, Mr. Fox, kitsune (the Japanese fox wife),kumiho (the Korean nine-tailed fox), and other treacherous shape-shifters.

Fox women can be found in many story traditions but they're particularly prevalent across the Far East. Fox wives, writes folklorist Heinz Insu Fenkle (in a good article on the subject) are seductive creatures who "entice unwary scholars and travelers with the lure of their sexuality and the illusion of their beauty and riches. They drain the men of their yang -- their masculine force -- and leave them dissipated or dead (much in the same way La Belle Dame Sans Merci in Keats's poem leaves her parade of hapless male victims).

"Korean fox lore, which comes from China (from sources probably originating in India and overlapping with Sumerian lamia lore) is actually quite simple compared to the complex body of fox culture that evolved in Japan. The Japanese fox, or kitsune, probably due to its resonance with the indigenous Shinto religion, is remarkably sophisticated. Whereas the arcane aspects of fox lore are only known to specialists in other East Asian countries, the Japanese kitsune lore is more commonly accessible. Tabloid media in Tokyo recently identified the negative influence of kitsune possession among members of the Aum Shinregyo (the cult responsible for the sarin attacks in the Tokyo subway). Popular media often report stories of young women possessed by demonic kitsune, and once in a while, in the more rural areas, one will run across positive reports of the kitsune associated with the rice god, Inari."

There are tales of fox wives in the West as well, but fewer of them; and they tend, by and large, to be gentler creatures. (To marry them is unlucky nonetheless, for they're skittish, shy, and not easily tamed.) An exception to this general rule can be found in the räven stories of Scandinavia. The fox-women who roam the forests of northern Europe are portrayed as heart-stoppingly beautiful, fiercely independent, and extremely dangerous.

Wild and sly you hunt in time of darkness long sleeves hide your claws with your prey you play your mouth is red with blood.

The "nine-tailed fox" of China and Japan is often (but not always) a demonic spirit, malevolent in intent. It takes possession of human bodies, both male and female, moving for one victim to another over thousands of years, seducing other men and women in order to dine on their hearts and livers. Human organs are also a delicacy for the nine-tailed fox, or kumiho, of Korean lore -- although the earliest texts don't present the kumiho as evil so much as amoral and unpredictable...occasionally even benevolent...much like the faeries of English folklore.

In the West, it's the fox-men we need to beware of -- such as Reynardine in the old folk ballad, a handsome were-fox who lures young maidens to a bloody death. Below, the ballad is performed by Jon Boden and The Remnant Kings at the Cecil Sharp House in London:

Mr. Fox, in the English fairy tale of that name, is cousin to the kumiho and Reynardine, with a bit of Bluebeard mixed in for good measure, promising marriage to a gentlewoman while his lair is littered with her predecessors' bones. Neil Gaiman drew inspiration from the tale when he wrote his wry, wicked poem "The White Road":

There was something sly about his smile, his eyes so black and sharp, his rufous hair. Something that sent her early to their trysting place, beneath the oak, beside the thornbush, something that made her climb the tree and wait. Climb a tree, and in her condition. Her love arrived at dusk, skulking by owl-light, carrying a bag, from which he took a mattock, shovel, knife. He worked with a will, beside the thornbush, beneath the oaken tree, he whistled gently, and he sang, as he dug her grave, that old song... shall I sing it for you, now, good folk?

Jeannine Hall Gailey, by contrast, casts a sympathetic eye on fox shape-shifters, writing plaintively from a kitsune's point of view in "The Fox-Wife's Invitation":

These ears aren't to be trusted. The keening in the night, didn't you hear? Once I believed all the stories didn’t have endings, but I realized the endings were invented, like zero, had yet to be imagined. The months come around again, and we are in the same place; full moons, cherries in bloom, the same deer, the same frogs, the same helpless scratching at the dirt. You leave poems I can’t read behind on the sheets, I try to teach you songs made of twigs and frost. you may be imprisoned in an underwater palace; I'll come riding to the rescue in disguise. Leave the magic tricks to me and to the teakettle. I've inhaled the spells of willow trees, spat them out as blankets of white crane feathers. Sleep easy, from behind the closet door I'll invent our fortunes, spin them from my own skin.

Although chancy to encounter in myth, and too wild to domesticate easily (in stories and in life), some of us long for foxes nonetheless, for their musky scent, their hot breath, their sharp-toothed magic. "I needed fox," wrote Adrienne Rich:

Badly I needed a vixen for the long time none had come near me I needed recognition from a triangulated face burnt-yellow eyes fronting the long body the fierce and sacrificial tail I needed history of fox briars of legend it was said she had run through I was in want of fox

And the truth of briars she had to have run through I craved to feel on her pelt if my hands could even slide past or her body slide between them sharp truth distressing surfaces of fur lacerated skin calling legend to account a vixen's courage in vixen terms

Ah, but Fox is right here, right beside us, Jack Roberts answers, a little warily:

Not the five tiny black birds that flew out from behind the mirror over the washstand,

nor the raccoon that crept out of the hamper,

nor even the opossum that hung from the ceiling fan

troubled me half so much as the fox in the bathtub.

There's a wildness in our lives. We need not look for it.

There are a number of good books that draw upon fox legends -- foremost among them, Kij Johnson's exquisite novel The Fox Woman. I also recommend Neil Gaiman's The Dream Hunters (with the Japanese artist Yoshitaka Amano); Larissa Lai's unusual novel, When Fox Is a Thousand; Helen Oyeyemi's recent novel, Mr. Fox; and Ellen Steiber's gorgeous urban fantasy novel, A Rumor of Gems, as well as her heart-breaking novella "The Fox Wife" (published in Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears). For younger readers, try the "Legend of Little Fur" series by Isobelle Carmody. You can also support a fine mythic writer by subscribing to Sylvia Linsteadt's The Gray Fox Epistles: Wild Tales By Mail (more information here). Many other good fox tales are listed here.

For the fox in myth, legend, and lore, try: Fox by Martin Wallen; Reynard the Fox, edited by Kenneth Varty; Kitsune: Japan's Fox of Mystery, Romance, and Humour by Kiyoshi Nozaki;Alien Kind: Foxes and Late Imperial Chinese Narrative by Raina Huntington; The Discourse on Foxes and Ghosts: Ji Yun and Eighteenth-Century Literati Storytelling by Leo Tak-hung Chan; and The Fox and the Jewel: Shared and Private Meanings in Contemporary Japanese Inari Worship, by Karen Smythers.

Myth & Moor

by Terri Windling

I'm a writer, artist, and book editor interested in myth, folklore, fairy tales, and the ways they are used in contemporary arts. I workin the New York publishing industry but I live in aDevon village at the edgeof Dartmoor with my English husband, dramatist & puppeteer Howard Gayton, our daughter, Victoria Windling-Gayton, and a joyful hound named Tilly (a Springer Spaniel/Labrador cross).

The 37th International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts: I'm delighted to be Guest of Honor in 2016 along with writer Holly Black and fairy tale scholar Cristina Bacchilega. ICFA is held annually in Orlando, Florida in March. Further information on the 37th conference will be posted soon.

Other events in 2016 are still being confirmed, so please check back.

Take a stroll through our village (and its environs) by visiting my neighbors' blogs & sites:

"As a poet I hold the most archaic values on earth...the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the terrifying initiation and rebirth, the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe. I try to hold both history and the wilderness in mind, that my poems may approach the true measure of things and stand against the unbalance and ignorance of our times." - Gary Snyder

"People talk about medium. What is your medium? My medium as a writer has been dirt, clay, sand - what I could touch, hold, stand on, and stand for - Earth. My medium has been Earth. Earth in correspondence with my mind.” - Terry Tempest Williams

"This earth that we live on is full of stories in the same way that, for a fish, the ocean is full of ocean. Some people say when we are born we’re born into stories. I say we’re also born from stories." - Ben Okri

"Everything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion." - Barry Lopez

Bookshelf

The Wood Wife:A mythic novel set in the Sonoran desert of Arizona. This link goes to the US edition; a UK edition is available here; and the new French edition is here. (For those who might be interested, I did a Q-&-A session on the book over on the Good Reads site.) Winner of the Mythopoeic Award.

Welcome to Bordertown:The latest volume in a classic Urban Fantasy series for YA readers. (An Audie Award nominee, for the audio book edition.) For information on the previous books, visit the Bordertown website.)

All told, I've published over forty books for children, teenagers and adults. More information on my writing, editing, and art can be found on my website.

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Please note that these books are linked to Amazon because it's the only book linking system that Typepad (this blogging service) has,but I urge you to please support your local bookstore if you plan to purchase any of the books mentioned on this blog.

Links to:

The Endicott StudioThe nonprofit organization for Mythic Arts that I ran for 22 years (starting in 1986), co-directed with author & folklorist Midori Snyder. The organization is currently on hiatus (while we catch our breaths and make a living), but a great deal of material from our Journal of Mythic Arts archive remains online.

Interstitial ArtsEllen Kushner, Delia Sherman, & other good folk look at writing and art in the interstices between genres. I was one of the founding board members, and remain an enthusiastic supporter.